Students from urban areas, higher-income families and those with access to coaching enjoyed significantly greater success in the 2012 joint entrance examination (JEE) for IITs, reveals a detailed internal analysis by the institutes.

The candidates who registered for JEE, as well as those who qualified, were concentrated in a few big cities. In fact, more than half the candidates who qualified came from just 11 cities. Of the 5,06,484 students registered for JEE in 2012, 24,112 qualified.

Among qualified candidates in all categories, the success rate (compared to the total who registered) was 5.8 per cent for city students, 4.2 per cent for those from towns and 2.7 per cent for those from villages. An analysis of the success ratio of those who took admission shows city students at 3.99 per cent, followed by 2.31 per cent from towns and a meagre 1.27 per cent from villages.

If general category alone were considered, the figures for those offered admission were 61 per cent for cities, 27 per cent for towns and 12 per cent for villages. “Overall, city candidates did better as against 51 per cent (of the) registration they could get 61 per cent of the total admission offers,” the internal report by the IITs says.

In income levels, those falling in the highest income slab, or over Rs 4.5 lakh a year, showed the highest success ratio at 10.3 per cent, all categories considered. This fell progressively with income. Students in the middle income age group — Rs 1 lakh to Rs 4.5 lakh — had a success ratio of 4.8 per cent and those from families earning less than Rs 1 lakh had a success ratio of a meagre 2.6 per cent. That, however, can be explained to some extent by the fact that almost 85 per cent of those who registered belonged to the middle and lower income categories.

In fact, among all the categories, general category candidates from the highest income group had the highest success rate. While 81.49 per cent of this category students, with parental income above Rs 4.5 lakh, qualified JEE last year, 38.01 per cent with parental income less than Rs 1 lakh qualified.

Incidentally, parents’ occupation too appeared to have had an impact on a candidate’s performance. “Candidates whose parents are in medical and engineering professions performed slightly better than other candidates. Candidates whose parents are in agriculture or in defence services have not been able